ACE (computer)

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The ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was the first computer, designed in Britain; it was designed by Alan Turing in 1946.

On February 19, 1946 Turing presented a paper to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) Executive Committee, giving the first complete design of a stored-program computer. Unlike most other early computers, it owed nothing to EDVAC; it was a completely independent design which was contemporaneous with EDVAC.

The ACE had a 48-bit word. It used delay line main memory, and contained about 7000 vacuum tubes. Its multiplication time was about 448 microseconds.

Due to various difficulties, the first version of the ACE actually built was the Pilot ACE, a smaller version of Turing's original complete design. The full-scale version was constructed later, in the late 1950s; it was working by late 1957, but was already obsolete, due to its reliance on delay-line main memory.

[edit] References

B. J. Copeland (Ed.), 2005. Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine. OUP, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-856593-3.
B. E. Carpenter, R. W. Doran, 1986. A. M. Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers. MIT Press, Cambridge.
David M. Yates, 1997. Turing's Legacy: A History of Computing at the National Physical Laboratory, 1945-1995. Science Museum, London.
Simon H. Lavington, 1980. Early British Computers: The Story of Vintage Computers and The People Who Built Them. Manchester University Press.
J. H. Wilkinson, 1980. Turing's Work at the National Physical Laboratory and the Construction of Pilot ACE, DEUCE and ACE. In N. Metropolis, J. Howlett, G.-C. Rota, (Eds.), A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, Academic Press, New York, 1980.